


no applause for the old pantomime

by Solanaceae



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Darkest Night 2018, Darkest Night 2018 Treat, F/F, Inappropriate Use of Lightsabers, alternate Universe - Sith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 19:47:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16125476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solanaceae/pseuds/Solanaceae
Summary: Leia is nine, and the ancient fury in her mother’s eyes makes sense to her. She’s been told what happened to her father—that he fell into darkness, that he is the right hand of the enemy they fight. Once, in the democratic galaxy her mother tells tales of, Padme had loved him, and he had loved her. It had almost been enough. Love, Padme says, was the only thing that could have saved him.Love, Leia hears, will always fail.





	no applause for the old pantomime

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/gifts).



> oh i've been looking for an excuse to write more leia/amilyn so i HAD to jump on this opportunity. this is just a little treat and i hope it's enjoyed :D

Her mother raises her with blood under her tongue and a gun in her hands. Padme’s fragile rebellion is sewn together with hope and hopeless determination, and every willing body is given a weapon as soon as they are old enough to hold one.

Leia is nine, and the ancient fury in her mother’s eyes makes sense to her. She’s been told what happened to her father—that he fell into darkness, that he is the right hand of the enemy they fight. Once, in the democratic galaxy her mother tells tales of, Padme had loved him, and he had loved her. It had almost been enough. Love, Padme says, was the only thing that could have saved him.

Love, Leia hears, will always fail.

(At night, she dreams of something strange yet entirely familiar humming under her skin like electricity, like a promise. Dreams the world shatters into crystals and she falls, endlessly—but instead of fear, she only feels anger, burning hotter and hotter in her throat until she jerks awake, sheets clenched in her fists and heart pounding.)

She’s ten when the Empire finally catches up to them. One safe planet after another destroyed, rebel ship after rebel ship blown out of the void and into oblivion. The Rebellion flees, splintering in every direction, and Padme puts Leia on her own ship, tells those with her to _keep her safe_. They head for the Outer Rim.

Their ship is fast, the fastest in the rebel fleet.

The Empire is faster.

Her father comes in a dark spacecraft, breath echoing like something dying (dead), a blade the color of blood in his hands, and something in Leia’s heart sings. He cuts down the rebels meant to protect her until it is only the two of them, standing in a ring of dead bodies.

The first words he says to her are, “What did she name you?”

She lifts her chin. “Leia.”

“Leia,” he repeats, and she has never heard her name said with so much wonder. He lets the hand holding his saber—still lit, still casting a heartbeat-red glow in the dark space—fall, and offers Leia the other one.

She takes it.

***

Her father is not gentle, but nor is he cruel—not to her, at least. She sees the way death pools in his footprints like water, watches him kill others over and over.

He teaches her about the Force, and for the first time she understands why she has always felt like a storm held in skin too thin to keep the wind from bleeding out. She goes with him on missions from the Emperor, shows him how Padme taught her to shoot, shows him how the Force is like a tree root forcing its way through the stone-cracks of her body: inexorable and carelessly violent.

She’s thirteen the first time she uses it to kill.

They’re on some tundra planet, and she’s waiting outside for her father to finish talking to the officials inside—because, contrary to what some may believe, diplomacy is not outside Vader’s skillset—when five men dressed all in white descend on her. Caught by surprise, she does not think to yell for help. She struggles, but they strike her over the head and darkness takes her.

She wakes bound to a chair in a room with one white-clad man. His back is to her, and so she keeps quiet, eyes darting around the room, gathering herself, noting everything: no windows, nothing to hide behind, the only weapon in the room the blaster at the man’s waist.

She can work with this.

After a moment, she clears her throat. The man turns.

“You will release me,” she says, layering her voice with conviction and the Force. She’s done this before, but never under life or death circumstances, and so she feels every one of the five seconds the man hesitates like needles of fear pricking at the back of her throat.

“I will not,” he says at last, but sounds uncertain.

Anger surmounts the fear, burning hot as she opens her mouth to repeat, “You _will_ release me.”

He steps forward. Pauses. Undoes the shackles at her wrists and ankles, then steps back.

She stands up, rotating her wrists to work circulation back into her hands. “Hand me your blaster,” she orders, and he does so. She brings it up to his chest and pulls the trigger.

At such close quarters, the weapon blasts a hole the size of her fist through his chest and makes a loud noise that brings the rest of the men running. She shoots them down as they come, one after another, faster than they can react, and shoots the leader’s weapon from his hand last. He falls to his knees, clutching his bleeding hand to his chest. “Mercy,” he pants.

Leia smiles. The man looks uncertain, then begins to smile back. She clenches her fist and cuts off his airway with the Force, and watches the hope change to horror on his face as he fights for breath.

Her father finds her sitting cross-legged on the floor, disassembling and cleaning the blaster, surrounded by five dead bodies.

“You’re late,” she informs him, not looking up from the piece she is examining.

“You have done well.”

Despite herself, the corner of her mouth twists in distaste. “I should not have allowed them to capture me in the first place.”

Vader inclines his head. “Then it is time for the next step in your training.”

***

Her lightsaber— _hers_ , shining with battle-glory and anger—is a deep, jewel-like red. She builds it with careful deliberation, and when she is finally allowed to use it, triumph sings in her veins.

(She kills with it, and every time she sees saber slice cleanly through someone, leaving only the smell of burnt flesh and a twitching corpse on the ground, she feels something dark and savage in her grow stronger.)

***

Gatalenta is a green and growing place that Leia finds absolutely suffocating. She’s there to exterminate a rumored worship of the Jedi ways. She’s twenty-three and more powerful in the Force than she has ever been, powerful enough that she knows she could defeat her father. (She will wait, perhaps, until she is powerful enough to defeat the Emperor, and then—who knows?)

The woman who greets her has hair dyed a deep blue that makes Leia think of the barely-restrained fury of the ocean.

“I’m Amilyn Holdo,” the woman says. “You must be Leia.”

Leia inclines her head. Amilyn smiles, more teeth than welcome, and it is the most beautiful thing Leia has found on this planet so far.

***

Amilyn fascinates her.

Even without her bright hair to stand out against the drab and neutral colors of her home, there is a pale, cold fire in the woman that burns like a star against the black. And Amilyn watches her with the same hunger in her eyes that Leia feels so acutely in her own throat.

They dance around each other for days while Leia hunts down the Jedi cult, exterminates it, then pretends she has very urgent reasons to stay on the planet that have nothing to do with the heat that rushes to her core when Amilyn’s eyes meet hers.

(Less love than _need_ , this feeling. Amilyn is the oxygen Leia’s fire burns to consume.)

They sit in Amilyn’s home, sharing a pot of tea, and Leia wonders how to begin.

“You are entirely unlike Gatalenta,” she muses. “I wonder how this place produced someone like you.”

“This _place_ ,” Amilyn says with mild distaste, “sickens me.”

“Oh?”

“What do they say about it, out there in the rest of the galaxy? That it’s _tranquil_ , that it’s _peaceful_.” There’s a gleam of something in Amilyn’s eyes that makes Leia want to shiver. “You understand why that would… not suit me.”

She knows it is foolish, but she opens her mouth anyway to say, “Come with me, then.”

Amilyn looks unsurprised. “Where to?”

“Anywhere. The Empire will provide for you.”

Amilyn leans forward, takes Leia’s chin between her fingers and tilts Leia’s head up. Leia swallows. “How generous of you,” Amilyn says, voice warm. “And what would I owe you in return?”

Leia wants to lean forward and claim Amilyn’s soft mouth with her own. “I think you know,” she whispers.

“I would give that willingly to you in any case,” Amilyn says, and kisses Leia hard, all tongue and lips and nipping teeth.

***

Leia can taste the roiling infinity under Amilyn’s skin as she kisses her neck, her collarbone, the swell of each of her breasts. The Force burns here, too, in the spaces between Amilyn’s cells—not nearly as brightly as in Leia, but still fire enough.

(Does she know, Leia wonders, what lurks under her skin? She suspects that Amilyn does not _explicitly_ know. She suspects that Amilyn would be open to learning about it.)

Amilyn leads her up to the bedroom, where her nimble hands undress Leia and pin her back against the bed, nearly drowning in the soft blankets. Leia surrenders to the urgency growing in her and the possessive, commanding way Amilyn handles her.

She lets Amilyn trail kisses down her naked torso, lingering on scars left by battles and training accidents, warmth interspersed with the bright, clear pain when Amilyn’s teeth scrape skin. Amilyn’s fingers slip between her legs and find her slick already, hips lifting in welcome.

Amilyn brings her to the edge of climax once, twice, thrice, and by the third time Leia’s fists are bunched in the bedsheets and her lip is sore from biting down on it. She is too proud to plead for release, and she suspects the other woman knows it.

She is all but trembling when Amilyn pulls away, slipping off the bed to where Leia’s clothes lie bunched on the floor.

“What are you doing?” Leia asks, tongue darting out over her lips.

Wordless, Amilyn lifts Leia’s lightsaber.

 _Yes,_ something in her immediately begs, _please, yes—_

In response to Amilyn’s questioning gaze, she nods. Amilyn climbs back up on the bed and Leia spreads her legs, the cool air against her slickness making her shiver.

Amilyn slips the lightsaber’s very tip inside her, and though she is thoroughly aroused and it is narrow, the width still a burning stretch and Leia throws back her head, swallowing an undignified noise. The hilt rocks back and forth under Amilyn’s hand, her other on Leia’s hips, pinning her to the bed, and she feels the sensation of cold metal against her most sensitive parts.

She opens her mouth, unsure what she wants to say, whether _please_ or _harder_ or merely to shape Amilyn’s name in her mouth to see how it tastes with the other woman between her spread legs. But Amilyn holds a finger to her lips, and Leia clamps her mouth shut as surely as if Amilyn had used the Force.

“You think too much,” Amilyn murmurs, and the hand holding the lightsaber _twists_ , making Leia’s back arch. She begins to thrust in and out with languid movements, each ridge and coil on the lightsaber hilt catching against Leia’s opening, rubbing against something inside her that sends lightning up her spine.

She can’t help it—her hips are snapping up to meet Amilyn’s movements, urging her deeper, and her heart is thunder in her ears. “Amilyn,” she gasps, and the other woman smiles. “Please don’t stop, please keep going—”

“Come for me, Leia.”

She climaxes harder than she has in her life, convulsing around the hilt buried in her, Amilyn’s name on her lips. Slumps back against the bed, breathing hard, as Amilyn pulls free, sets the lightsaber hilt aside, and moves up the bed to straddle Leia’s head, positioning her dripping sex over Leia’s face.

Leia pleasures Amilyn with her mouth, savoring each noise her tongue draws from Amilyn’s mouth, every quiver of her thighs around Leia’s head. Amilyn climaxes quickly, loudly, and Leia licks the sweet-musky taste of her off her lips as she pulls away.

They lie side by side, bodies pressed together, and Leia slips into a drowsy haze and dreams of sea-blue hair, wakes to find Amilyn curled against her, one arm thrown over Leia’s stomach, breath slow and even with sleep.

 _Stay with me_ , she thinks, and presses a gentle kiss to the top of Amilyn’s head.


End file.
